


What You Want

by olivemartini



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Fluff, I really just wanted to write a fic where Klaus gets a boyfriend, Klaus gets a boyfriend, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Past Drug Use, but happy, mentions of drug addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 20:17:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18239723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: It figures, the one time he actually likes a guy, he comes with a sister.A dead sister.





	What You Want

It figures, the one time he actually likes a guy, he comes with a sister.

A dead sister.

"Hey."  She's perched at the end of his bed, kicking her legs out.  If she were solid, her heels would have banged back into the bedframe, but as it is they just pass right through, flickering in and out of his view.  "You like my brother?"

She knows that he likes her brother.  Knows because halfway through their third date there had been empty space one moment and then her the next, sitting at the table right beside theirs, leaning back in her chair and laughing and leaning so that her hair trailed over the table, right in the middle of where Klaus' pasta was sitting.  It had been incredibly distracting, and Klaus, who had gotten to the point where he could control it except in the case of extreme emotional attachment (a.k.a Ben, and now ghost girl), had flinched so bad that he had almost fallen off his chair, and then had to make an excuse about spiders when Clyde had asked him if he was okay.

( _She flickered in and out during their entire meal, like she couldn't quite figure out how to make herself stay but was going to do it out sheer stubbornness.  She's in pajamas, the edges frayed and ragged and soaked dark with water, and Klaus keeps track of her even as Clyde reaches out across the table to grab onto his hand- standing in the middle of the aisle and making the waitress shiver with confused revulsion when she passes through her, climbing up on top of the counter over at the bar, tilting her head out of the open window.  She strays around the restaurant, but Klaus doesn't miss how she seems to revolve around their table, drinking in the sight of her brother._ )

( _The look on her face was familiar.  Hungry, aching.  He had seen it on Ben's face every day._ )

Klaus doesn't answer her.  He cracks one eye open when he feels her move closer to him, both to check that her brother was still in the shower and also because he was afraid that she would suddenly become solid and crack a lamp down over her head.  He hasn't been able to learn how to control that, either- Ben popping in and out of corporal form, scared ghosts trying to run him through with pens and needles and childproof scissors, angry ones pinning him to the wall with a chokehold that even Luther isn't a match for.  

"Who are you?"

It seemed like a decent question, but she clearly doesn't like it.

"His sister."  She leans into one of the photos propped up on his shelf.  It's of the umbrella academy when they were young and just starting out, back when he believed in his father enough to try and hear the dead when the door between them opens.  In the months since his death, Klaus has stopped to wonder how he knew, what little tick of Klaus' gave his power away.  With the others, their power was fairly obvious.  With Klaus, he would be so easy to pawn off as crazy if he turned out to be a disappointment.  "Which one are you?"

She edges too close to the photo and her fingers pass through it when she tries to grasp onto it.

"The one who speaks to dead people." He's sober, and kinder, but still mean.  Now it's a sharp kind of mean, though, which he thinks is better than before, when his ill advised actions would land on his siblings and everyone around him like blows to the face.  The ache was widespread, then.  Now it's a pointed kind of pain.  "Obviously."

"Obviously."  She arches an eyebrow at him.  Down the hallway, the water shuts off, and both of their heads twist to stare at the doorway.  He turns away before she does and studies the look on her face- the hunger.  The ache.  "I meant your name."

"Klaus."  He reaches out a hand and she grabs for it even though they couldn't touch each other.  He's learned that going through the motions helps.  Just because you're dead doesn't mean that you stop knowing how to be human.  "And you?"

She smiles, just as her brother comes in, and that half second where they are standing beside each other, the ghost alongside her baby brother, they look identical, identical sunshine children, even though one is permanently cast into the shadows.  

"Julie."  At the sound of her name, her brother stops in the middle of toweling off his hair, his head twitching to the side like she had pulled it around to face her.  "Julie Randall."

 

 

 

 

Klaus wants to tell him.

Ben thinks its a bad idea.

"You wouldn't even tell the others about me, before I could go solid.  Remember that?"  Klaus is trying to work his way through tying a tie, and Ben makes an impatient noise in his throat before reaching out and doing it for him.  "Remember why you did that?"

"So they could move on."  He did remember.  The screaming from his siblings.  His father, telling him that under no circumstances was he to entertain the other children's fantasies, and to send Ben away, that he would only be a distraction.  Ben himself, up all night, screaming, waking up each day and learning death all over again.  "But he already moved on."

"You think so?"  Ben steps back, letting Klaus see in the mirror.  "You think he'll ever be able to be happy, if he knows what happens after?"

It's a low blow.  An unfair blow, mostly, because Ben has no idea what happens after.  He had been too worried about his siblings to move anywhere that they weren't.

"You think he won't ask, once he finds out who I am?  What I can do?"

Clyde knows a bit.  About Umbrella Academy, but not the powers.  About Klaus' epic crash and burn, and drug problem, and the resulting dismissal from the family.  When asked, Klaus just told him that their powers were more curse than blessing, and that he would tell him, eventually.   Eventually hasn't happened on his own, and Clyde hasn't asked.

Ben is still watching him, and comes up behind him to untuck the shirt, which had looked ridiculous and suggested a kind of put together that Klaus can't quite pull off.  

In the mirror, Ben's eyes were sad.  "You really think he's going to want to stick around that long?"

Klaus didn't want to jinx it, but- "yeah."  The word came out strangled, so Klaus coughed and tried again.  "I think he really might."

 

 

 

Klaus isn't used to people being gentle with him.

There had been no one to  _be_ gentle before, no time for it.  When he was growing up, his father was distant and he couldn't grab up too much attention from his mother, what with the others always needing so much of it.  And when he grew older, after the long nights spent out in the chill and the clamor of the mausoleums, the idea of people putting their hands on him, gentle or otherwise, had filled him up with a revulsion so strong and sudden that he used to think that something inside of him had snapped, broken beyond repair.  Later, when he fell into the drugs and Klaus stopped being able to feel anything strongly enough to remember the chill of all that stone, it hadn't been that bad- an endless string of hands and bodies and half made beds to fall into at night and sneak out of during the morning, never saying no, but never having anyone wait for the yes, either.  With the drugs, he never knew what he wanted, only what he didn't, and it didn't matter what he put up with along the way, just so long as he got to get high, so long as he got to make the voices stop.

(Dave, of course, might have been gentle, if they had time.  If they weren't in the middle of a war.  If they hadn't been at a time where the two of them being gentle with each other would have caused the world to rip them apart.  Klaus never asked for more, or resented Dave for not being able to give Klaus everything he wanted- if they had been caught, Dave didn't have a magic briefcase to portal him to a time where it was okay.  Or at least, more okay.)

(Though it didn't matter, in retrospect, when there was a hole blown through his chest and blood flowing over Klaus' hands, but some things you only learn through experience.)

But Clyde.

Clyde is so, so gentle.

"Hey, can we," The words are foreign in Klaus' mouth.  He doesn't know if he had ever said them before.  Doesn't know if he had ever done this during a time when he was coherent enough to say them, other than with Dave.  "Can we stop, for a second?"

"Yeah."  Clyde's hands drop from him immediately- not like he was angry, and not like he was trying to make him feel bad, but more like Klaus' was the one in charge.  That anything Klaus wanted, he would give.  He rolls over a bit, just enough room that Klaus has space to breathe, and they both stare at the ceiling before Clyde picks up one of his hands again.  "Is everything alright?  Did I hurt you?"

"No.  No, sorry, we," There were tears building up in Klaus' eyes, the pressure burning in the back of his throat.  He doesn't know what he'll do if he breaks down in the middle of this.  Doesn't know what he could possibly say to explain it.  "We can keep going if you want."

Clyde's eyes were soft.  Soft and sorry, like he might be guessing how strange it is for Klaus, how out of the ordinary it is for him to be with someone like Clyde.  "But you don't want, do you?"  Klaus doesn't answer, terrified, as always, that this will be another thing that he has messed up.  Clyde doesn't seem to mind that he is only staring at the ceiling, just tucks himself back into Klaus' side, drawing the blanket up around them both.  It's a new blanket, soft, not scratchy, and Klaus can't remember if he had told Clyde about the thing he has with textures, but he must have.  And Clyde had listened.  "Only what you want."  The words were mumbled into his side.  "Only ever what you want."

 

 

 

 His sister is still popping up everywhere, but Klaus ignores her.

She'll go away eventually, once she drinks her fill, once she's satisfied that her brother was alright.

Hopefully.

Klaus doesn't really fancy grilling his boyfriend of four months about what possibly unfinished business his sister could have left behind when she died, especially when said boyfriend hasn't even mentioned his sister.

"He makes you happy, doesn't he?"  Ben is there.  Ben doesn't interact with her.  He says its weird.  Julie says he doesn't have room to talk.  "My brother."

"Yeah."  Clyde wasn't even here, but it was his house.  Klaus hopes its just the fact that there was so much of Clyde in the house that allowed her to pop up, and not a newfound attachment to Klaus.  He likes Clyde, and he likes his sister even though she is dead, but he doesn't much fancy the idea that she could pop into existence around him whenever she gets bored.  "You think I make him happy?"

"Far as I can tell.  I don't really know much about him, anymore.  Though I don't know why," She goes from sad to spiteful in the blink of an eye.  Most of the spirits do.  They're all so resentful over something.  "I like to think he could do better than an ex junkie."

Across the room, Ben makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds like an angry cat.

"I don't blame you."  Klaus keeps waiting for it, for him to leave. He's not entirely sure why he won't.  "I think that, too."

 

 

 

He's wearing short sleeves around him for the first time.

It had been a conscious choice, one that Klaus had done with no small amount of calculation.  They'd met in winter, so it hadn't been strange, for him to always be wearing long sleeves and jackets, and in the times where Clyde was able to see his arms, he had been too distracted to really examine them.  The scars were hard to see, if you weren't looking.

But now, Clyde was looking.

"How long ago?"  He is holding Klaus' arm in the palm of his hand, cradling it like it's broken, the pad of his thumb following over the scars.  There was a knot of them at the crook of his elbow, and others, older and more jagged scattered over his forearm.  Klaus hopes he doesn't ask about those.  He won't be able to answer.  He doesn't know how they got there- only assumes that he had done them himself.  

"I don't know for sure.  Probably a few years.  Honestly, I," Clyde still isn't looking at him like something dirty.  Something broken.  Something pathetic, the way that his family would look at him.  "when I got high, I got really high.  A lot of my life has gaps in it and I don't know if its because of the drugs or because of the- well, you know."

He meant to say his powers, the time where he was so afraid that it forces him into a state of mind numbing terror.  Adrenaline is a bigger high than anything Klaus could get his hands on, his whole brain giving into some white washed static, and when it recedes, he is never standing in the same place that he had been when it started.

Clyde hums.  Klaus hasn't given him too many details- can't, not without giving away the fact that his sister sometimes sits in the corner of the room and watches the two of them sleep.  And he won't be telling him the whole story of why the drugs came, what with his father opening the floodgates with no way to shut them.  The only thing he forgot to teach Klaus is how to turn the voices off.  Klaus isn't sure if it ever occurred to him to find a way to make it stop.

"How long has it been since you stopped?"

"About six months ago?"

"Half a year."  Clyde hums again, and then ducks his head to kiss at the inside of Klaus' wrists.  There was a scar there, almost a decade old, so faded that Clyde couldn't have known what he was doing, but Klaus feels it like it's a punch.  "We should celebrate."

"Don't count on me yet.  I tend to disappoint.  But six months was in general, this," He taps at the inside of his arm, and Klaus can push through the haze just enough to remember the slice of the needle when it goes in at the wrong angle, the jarring when it scrapes across the bones, the shakes of withdraw that were so much worse than with anything else.  "I tried everything once.  Anything I could get my hands on, and if it worked, I kept it."

"And that?  Did it work?"

Clyde didn't sound like he was laughing at him, or angry.  He sounded like he understood what it's like to need to slam the self destruct button.  Klaus can't imagine that the boy laying beside him could have found himself as far into the gutter as Klaus had, but everyone has stories.

"Not enough to make it worth it.  Although, I'm starting to wonder if any of it was worth it."

Clyde pulls him tighter, runs his finger over the scars again.  "Wasn't your fault."

Klaus had told him enough about his father that Clyde could say that with some amount of certainty and not have the words sound empty, but Klaus knows that he is wrong.  Addiction begins with a choice, and then it is fed by a long series of bad choices.

"Still."  Klaus' voice is a little too gruff.  "It wasn't."

 

 

It's another month before he talks about his sister.

"Her name was Julie.  She was six years older than me."  Clyde isn't crying, which is strange.  Klaus would have thought that he was the kind of guy who would cry, what with how strong he manages to be for Klaus all the time.  Or maybe he had just ran out of tears to give for her.  "I was eleven when she died."

Seventeen.

Not as young as Ben, and definitely not as young as some of the other kids he had seen, and yet- seventeen seems so painfully young.

It was her birthday.  Julie had told him that, whispered it to him when he walked in the door like it was some sort of secret, but Klaus knows now that it was a warning.

"What happened?"

He doesn't know if that was the right question.  Klaus had never been taken care of before, and with that, he had never done any type of caring, except for when he was young and would try to protect his siblings, even though they would never protect him.  He's not sure he knows how to do it.

"She drowned."  Clyde bends over on himself, and even as Klaus reaches for him he looks over to where Julie was standing in the corner, at the permanently wet ends of her pajamas pants.  "We had a pool in the backyard, and when she went out one night to get the dog, she fell in.  She was the last one up, and when she noticed the dog was missing, she must have gone out there, and with the dark, she couldn't see where she was going, and... The pool cover was too heavy for her to lift from the bottom.  She got stuck.  She couldn't get out."

There's a choked off cry and a flicker of the lights as Julie falls to her knees in front of them.

"It was my fault.  Making sure the dog was inside before I go to bed was my job."  There's decades of pain in those two sentences.  Klaus isn't sure he has ever said those words out loud before.  "I didn't.  And that's why she died."

"It wasn't your fault."  For a moment, it seems like Julie has forgotten that he cannot see her.  She reaches forward, intending to lay her own hands over where Klaus and Clyde's were clasped together, but they fall right through, sink into the mattress and she topples forward.  She rounds on Klaus with enough anger to make the streetlights outside the window blaze and burst before falling dark.  "Tell him, Klaus.  Tell him it wasn't his fault."

Klaus didn't need to argue.

"It wasn't."  Klaus holds onto his hands tighter, and Clyde seems to choke on empty air.  "I promise, I-,"  _I can see her.  That's what my power is.  She's sitting right there, kneeling in front of you, saying that it wasn't your fault._   "I know a lot about fault.  And a lot about blame.  And I know you don't believe me, but none of it belongs with you."

 

 

 

"It wasn't his fault."  It's later, after Clyde had fallen asleep and Klaus had stayed awake, staring at where Julie was still kneeling by the bed.  "It wasn't an accident."

There's a flicker of anger, but even that doesn't rise to the surface.  Klaus isn't even that surprised.

"I didn't want to be alone when I died.  That's why the dog was out there.  Not because Clyde forgot.  I just wanted, to sit with him for a bit, and then,"

Klaus cut across her.  "And then you jumped into the pool?"

"Yeah.  I wanted to die." There was something in her voice, begging him to understand.  To say he gets it.  To say that it wasn't her fault, either, and he understands that, has felt that need himself, thinks that within every person there is, at least in some part, the need to wrench their survival instinct out of their bodies and see how much they can really take.  "And then when it really came down to it, I realized that I didn't."

"Is that why you're still here?"  His voice was a bit dull.  He wishes that he couldn't hear her.  "Because you don't want to be dead?"

"I'm here because I left him alone.  Because I wanted to make sure that he was okay.  That he was happy."  She bends over the bed, and for just a second, she flickers into something solid and can brush the hair out of Clyde's face, press a kiss to his forehead before leaning back.  She is begging, he realizes, begging him for something.  "You'll make him happy, won't you?"

"I don't," Klaus doesn't think he has ever made anyone happy.

"If he asks you about me, tell him I'm happy.  Tell him whatever you want, just so long as it isn't the truth."

"You really should move on," Klaus said, and its an echo, the same thing that he used to tell Ben every day.  "It'd be better,"

"Klaus."  She had never said his name before.  This time, Julie reaches out to him, and even though he has been faced with the dead for as long as he can remember, Klaus still shudders and has to fight the urge to move away from her, still filled with the fear like he always is. His father was right.  He's nothing more than a coward.  "Promise me.  Promise me you'll make him be okay."

"Alright."  He's glad, again, that he had never succeeded in all those times he wanted to die.  Glad he was not the one begging people to be okay with no way to reach them. "I promise."

 

 

 

When he tells him, Clyde doesn't answer at first.

"I'm sorry," Klaus says, not sure what he is apologizing for- for keeping it a secret, for being the way that he was, for having the power, for having it be a useless power and not something wonderful like the others.  "I wanted to tell you, but-,"

"Did you know?"  Clyde does not look angry.  "Can you see her?"

Klaus knew that would be the first question.

It is alwaysthe first question.

"No."  Klaus swallows, and across the room, Julie smiles at him.  "No, I only see them when they have something that they still need to do.  Some sort of,"

"Unfinished business?"

"Sometimes.  Or sometimes an emotion, if they're angry, or sad, still, about something that had happened, but your sister," Klaus has to swallow to speak around the lump in her throat.  "I've never seen her.  Which means that she's happy, somewhere. And when you knew her, she was happy then, too.  And she must have loved you, so much."

Clyde is crying.  Julie is crying. 

Klaus just hates himself.

"It wasn't your fault.  She doesn't blame you, at all.  That's how I know.  If she blamed you, even in the least, she would have to be here, until she lets go of it. Only free people get to move on.  And she moved on, so," He is rambling, saying the same thing.  "She's happy.  And you don't have to feel guilty for being happy, either.  She wouldn't have wanted that for you."

There's a pause where Klaus looks over the room at Julie.  She flickers, and leaves, and Klaus is not sure if she will be coming back.

"She only wanted you to be happy," and Clyde does not ask how he knows this, does not seem to question this at all, just holds Klaus tighter.  "All she ever wanted was for you to be happy."

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


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